.F8 S8
Copy 1
r
1700 1900
THE vSTORY OF
A CHURCH FOR
TWO CENTURIES
A SERMON
AT THE
FIRST PARISH CHURCH
FRAMINGHAM
JUNE TENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED
By CALVIN STEBBINS
(published by reque.st)
GEO. I.. CLAPP, PRINTER, SOUTH FRAMINGHAM, MASS.
1900
i/oo 1900
THE STORY OF
A CHURCH FOR
TWO CENTURIES
A SERMON
AT THE
FIRST PARISH CHURCH
FRAMINGHAM
JUNE TENTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED
By CALVIN STKBBINS
(published by request)
GEO. t,. CI.APP, PRINTER, SOUTH FRAMINGHAM, MASS.
1900
■YYvtu. S a-t^-^-ey^
MINISTERS OF THE PARISH
John Swift, H. U., 1697.
Settled Oct. 8th, 1701 — Died April 24tli, 1745.
Mathew Bridge, H. U., 1741.
Settled Feb. 19th, 1745-46 — Died Sept. 2, 1775.
David Kei,i.ogg, D. C, 1775.
Settled Jan. 10th, 1781 to Jan. 20th 1830.
A. B. MuzzEY, H.U., 1824.
Settled June 10th, 1830 to May 18th, 1833.
George Chapman, H.U., 1828.
Settled Nov. 6, 1833— Died June 2, 1834.
WII.LIAM Barry, B. U., 1822.
Settled Dec. 16, 1835 to Dec. 16, 1845.
John N. Bellows.
Settled April 15, 1846 to Oct. 16, 1847.
J. H. Phipps, Har. Div., 1848.
Settled Nov 16, 1848 to 1853.
Samuel L. Robbins, Har. Div., 1833.
Settled 1854 to 1867.
Henry G. Spaulding, H. U., 1860.
Settled Feb. 19. 1868 to June 15, 1873.
Charles A. Humphreys, H. U., 1860.
•. ; ... ..^ ,.. ..; . ; ..; ; ; -^Nov. 2, 1873 to Nov. 1, 1891.
Ernest 'C BMiiH'.' ..::•" •
, , Settled Jan. 21, 1892 to Oct. 1, 1899.
FORE-WORD
At a meeting of the members of the First Parish Church
in Framingham held on April 8th, 1900, in consideration
of the fact that the efforts for the incorporation of the
town and the organization of the church were simulta-
neous movements, it was voted to celebrate in some
appropriate manner the inception of the latter. A com-
mittee was appointed consisting of S. B. Bird, Franklin
E. Gregory, William F. Gregory, Sidney A. Phillips,
Joseph B. Cloyes, S. S. Woodbury, W. I. Brigham and
Edward W. Kingsbury to make suitable arrangements.
The committee invited the Rev. Calvin Stebbins to
prepare an address for the occasion. The invitation was
accepted and the address was spoken at the church on
Sunday, June loth. Later he was asked to furnish a copy
of it and it with the other services is now published.
ORDER OF SERVICES
I. Organ Voluntary.
II. Exhortation.
We are gathered here today in the fullness of the Summer,
and on an occasion crowded with memories of the past, to
praise and worship the God of our fathers and our God.
His voice was heard in the morning of the world from afar,
and in the evening He speaketh at the door; He saw the end
from the beginning and wove the ages as upon a loom ; He
remembered the low estate of His children and bent to them
His testimonies from of old ; He made a way in the sea and
a path in the mighty waters for our fathers and brought them
in a way they knew not, and led them in paths they did not
know.
L,et us rejoice and be exceeding glad. Let us sing unto
the Lord a new song, and make known his deeds among all
the people. Let us talk of all his wondrous works, and sing
of the glories of his kingdom, which is an everlasting king-
dom, which makes the darkness light and the night to shine
as the day, and us able able to say with the men of old : —
"Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be
ignorant of us and Israel acknowledge us not ; Thou art our
Father, our Redeemer ; Thy name is from everlasting."
" Praise God, our Maker and our Friend ;
Praise him through time, till time shall end ;
Till psalm and song his name adore
Through Heaven's great day of evermore."
6 The Story of a Church
III. Choir.
IV. The 84TH Psalm.
From " The/ Psalms,/ Hjunns,/ And/ Spiritual Songs/ of
the, Old & New Testament./ Faithfully Translated into/
English Metre./ For the use, edification and comfort of the/
Saints in publick & private, especially in New England./
Cambridge,/ Printed for Hczekiah Usher, of Boston,/ 1665."
lyined, and sung, by the Choir and the Congregation.
To the chief Musician, upon Gittith,/ A Psalm for the
Sons of Korah./
How Amiable Lord of hosts,
thy Tabernacles be ?
2. My soul longs for Jehovah's Courts,
yea it ev'n faints in me :
Unto the strong and living God,
my heart and flesh do shout.
3. Yea sparrow finds an house, her nest
the swallow eke finds out :
Wherein she may her young ones lay,
thine altars near unto :
O thou that art of armies Lord,
my King, my God also.
4. O blest are they within thy house
who dwell, still they '11 thee praise :
5. Blest is the man whose strength 's in thee,
in whose heart are their wayes.
6. Who as they pass through Baca's Vale,
a fountain do it make ;
Also the pools that are therein,
their fill of rain do take.
7. From strength to strength they go : to God,
in Siou all appear.
8. Lord God of hosts, O hear my
prayer,
O Jacob's God give ear.
For Tivo Centuries. 7
(2)
9. Behold, O God, our shield, the face
of thine annointed see.
10. For better 's in thy Courts a day,
than elsewhere thousands be:
I rather had a door-keeper
be i' th' house of my God,
Than in the tents of wickedness
to settle mine abode.
11. Because the Lord God is a Sun,
he is a shield also :
Jehovah on his people grace
and glory will bestow :
No good thing will be hold from them
that do walk uprightly,
12. O lyord of hosts, the man is blest
that puts his trust in thee.
V. Prayer. The Rev. Henry G. Spaulding.
VI. Response. Solo by Mr. Howard Mason.
VII. Hymn^ By Samuel Lo7ig fellow.
• O Life that maketh all things new, —
The blooming earth, the thoughts of men, —
Our pilgrim feet, wet with thy dew,
In gladness hither turn again.
From hand to hand the greeting flows.
From eye to eye the signals run.
From heart to heart the bright hope glows.
The seekers of the Light are one :
One in the freedom of the truth,
One in the joy of paths untrod.
One in the soul's perennial youth,
One in the larger thought of God.
The freer step, the fuller breath,
The wide horizon's grander view.
The sense of life that knows no death, —
The Life that maketh all things new.
8 The Story of a Church
VIII. Sermon. By the Rev. Calvin Stebbins.
IX, Prayer.
X. Hymn. By Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Read by the Rev. Horatio Stebbins, D.D.
of San Francisco, California.
We love the venerable house
Our fathers built to God ; —
In heaven are kept their grateful vows,
Their dust endears the sod.
Here holy thoughts a light have shed
From many a radiant face,
And prayers of humble virtue made
The perfume of the place.
And anxious hearts have pondered here
The mystery of life,
And prayed the eternal Light to clear
Their doubts, and aid their strife.
From humble tenements around
Came up the pensive train,
And in the church a blessing found
That filled their homes again ;
They live with God ; their homes are dust ;
Yet here their children pray,
And in this fleeting lifetime trust
To find the narro^v way.
XI. Benediction.
XII. Organ.
W. E. Chenery, Organist.
Howard Mason, Chorister.
For Tivo Centuries.
SERMON
I stir up your pure minds b)' way of remembrance.
2d Peter Hi, i .
But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call
heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers.
T/ie Ads xxiv, 14.
It has been suggested that there are two kinds of
memory. One belongs to the individual and has to do
with his life only; it connects his today with his
yesterdays, and gives continuity to his existence in time.
The other takes him out of himself and brings him in
contact with immortal principles as illustrated in the lives
of others, and associates his life with exalted feelings and
heroic deeds. When his pure mind is stirred by way of
this remembrance, he is taken out of his personal
experience and made partaker of another and a higher
spirit. In response to its suggestions, he sets apart days
in which to commemorate the announcement of great
principles in politics, morals and religion. He keeps the
birthdays of men he has never seen, decorates public
halls, squares and gardens with the representations of
heroic and civic virtues; he keeps the centennial of the
state, of the incorporation of the town and of the
fonnation of the church. This is the principle that brings
us together today that our pure minds may be stirred by
way of remembrance.
The incorporation of this town took place in the last
year of the seventeenth century and about the same time
the people went about the organization of a church. It
was a period of great financial depression, accompanied
lo The Story of a Church
with spiritual dejection throughout all New England, and
especially in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The old
century went out in gloom, and the new came in with a
joyless morn. The period has been rightly called "The
dark days of New England." The first generation, the
sturdy men who laid the foundations and built the
basement story of our great structure of nationality, had
gone, and the great generation which achieved our national
independence was yet to come.
In the meantime there was little, apparently, before the
people but a hard struggle for life. The witchcraft mania
had left a baleful trail behind it. The disastrous failure
of Sir William Phipps's expedition against Quebec had
broken the spirit of the people, carried mourning into
hundreds of homes, left the borders open to the hostile
incursions of French and Indians, had loaded the colony
with debt, and an attempt to create money out of the
public credit had resulted in great financial distress.
Disasters on sea and land came thick and fast: hurricanes,
hail-stonns, floods whose violence changed the channels of
rivers, ministers' houses struck by lightning, and great
loss of cattle :-
To Horses, Swine, Net-Cattel, Sheep aud Deer,
Ninety and seven proved a mortal year,
a scarcity of food, high prices, the coldest weather in
winter since the country was settled, all this did not fail
to have its impression upon the minds of the people.
The tone of social and moral life had deteriorated, and
there was a marked change in manners for the worse, but
theology was triumphant. It was under these circum-
stances that the people of the new town laid another
burden upon themselves and went about to build a church.
Two hundred years is not a very long period in the
history of English-speaking men in their old home, but
it is a long period in the New World. It measures one
For Tzvo Centuries. ii
half the time since Cohimbus discovered America, and
about all the time that his great discovery has been a
blessing to mankind.
This period of two hundred years has been a field for
the action of occult and powerful forces, and through their
agency amazing changes have been wrought in every
department of human life. It seems impossible that the
present should be the legitimate child of the past. Yet
the men of old were the makers of today, but were
unconscious of what they were doing. There are few
more striking illustrations of the presence of a divine
hand o;uidino; in the affairs of men than the fact that men
are not allowed to be frightened by foreseeing the results
of their labors. If the founders of this church could
have foreseen the results of these two hundred years,
they would have dismissed at once the thought of
building a church for such an end. And this is true in
regard to every church in Christendom.
The Puritans brought with them to this country two
institutions which were almost co-eval with the origin of
man. Both had the same object in view — the realization
of the moral law in hmnan conduct. One speaks in
a command, and says to all for the good of all : "Thou
shalt "; the other is voluntary, and speaks in a vow: "We
will." The one is society in state, the other society in
church.
A great experiment was to be tried here with both these
forms of society The experiment in state was no other
than to see whether the social pyramid would stand more
steadily on its base than as heretofore on its apex. The
experiment in the church was equally bold ; it was no
other than an attempt to organize a voluntary body,
without priest and without ritual, which should be self-
governing and be able to meet the moral and religious
wants of human nature.
We are here today to rejoice in the fact that the First
Church in Framingham has weathered the storms and
1 2 The Story of a Church
vicisitudes of two centuries ; that it has adjusted itself to
the changed conditions and wants that have occurred in
that time ; that it has today no quarrel with civilization,
science or reason, and that it brings to us the lesson, ever
old and forever new, that is folded up in those four words
of amazing import and exhaustless significence, — God,
immortality, duty and liberty.
It has been wittily said that : —
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
The tree and truth have this in common, — they both
grow, and truth grows forever ; it has perennial youth,
and an institution that embodies it and grows with it, that
can adjust itself to a fuller life and afford its tenant larger
accomodations as the generations come and go, is here to
stay while truth has need of it.
It might seem pleasant to look in upon the fathers as
they gather for the first time in the new meeting house on
the hill in yonder cemetery. We should without doubt,
find them all there, for, as John Adams said, — " Man is
a church-going animal" ; at least he was in those days.
But only the most tolerant, and the most gifted spirits of
today, could enter into those services two hundred years
ago and rejoice with them that do rejoice.
The fathers of New England, as was natural, brought
with them many old-world habits of thought and feeling
and planted them here, but it is strange that the survival
of the spirit of caste should have been fostered in the
services of the church. "It is somewhat noticeable,"
says one of our historians, " that equality in the worship
of a common Creator has been as little observed in
democratic New England as in any country classed as
civilized, if, indeed, it has not been less observed."
{ Adams'' Three Epochs^ 11^ 7JP-)
For Two Centuries. 13
The assignment of the pews and sittings in the meeting
house was a very important subject and one that had to be
handled with great caution. This little church in the
wilderness was keenly alive to social distinctions, especially
in worship. In the town meeting all men were equal,
The ballot-box swept away all distinctions.
The spirit of caste took refuge in the Church in a form
that had already an unenviable reputation on account of
the fierce imprecations called down upon the heads of
those who sought the chief seats in the synagogues. But
our fathers were Old Testament Christians.
In this church at first the most highly esteemed
situations for worship were under the galleries, and the
representatives of social position and wealth secured these,
and with the permission of the town built pews for
themselves and their families, and without permission cut
doors and windows of all shapes and sizes in the walls.
Our fathers had some strange notions on this subject of
pews. At Braintree, the town gave William Rawson the
privilege of building a pew, between or upon the two
beams over the pulpit, but in such a way as not to
obstruct the light. {Brainlree^ Toiu7i Records^ ^6.)
The body of the church was filled with benches. The
half of the floor and galleries to the left of the minister
was assigned to the women and the right to the men, and
the boys were put by themselves, and the tythingman
was instructed to see to it that they did not neglect the
means of grace. The town records show how the dignity
of the sittings was adjusted. It was voted: "That in
dignity the seats shall rank as follows : — the table ( the
deacon's seat ) and the foreseats are the two highest ; the
front gallery equals in dignity the second and third seats
in the body of the house; the side galleries equal in
dignity the fourth and fifth seats in the body of the
house." The worshipers here were very jealous of their
rights, and the deacons were requested to take special
14 TJie Story of a Churcli
notice ' ' that all persons do keep to their own seats
appointed to them and keep out of the seats of others
whereby the Sabbath is profaned."
Wealth has wiped out most of these distinctions in the
church, but one was especially tenacious of life and many
of you may recollect it. Behind the men's seats, or up
in the corner of their gallery, was the place of dignity for
the colored population both slave and free , for the slave
was here in early times. The Rev. John vSwift, the first
minister of the church, owned live of his fellowmen.
The parson does not seem to have been a hard master.
After the first secession from the church, about the year
1 735) Nero, one of his slaves followed those who left and
joined the chiuxh in Hopkinton on the same conditions as
the others. The rights of his mind at least were respected
by his master. Mr. Swift however showed that he had a
will of his own. He refused to give the seceders letters
of dismissal from this church. They were however
received into the church at Hopkinton and years of
controversy made the case very celebrated in the history
of ecclesiastical polity in New England.
There is something like irony in the fate that lifts one
of the humblest worshipers in a church to fame and leaves
his betters to be forgotten. Just before the Revolution a
slave belonging to Major Lawson Buckminster joined this
church under the " half-way covenant," which indicates
to us that he was a very sensible man. He joined the
' ' Minutemen ' ' also and when the first alarm came he
went to Lexington, Concord and Cambridge. He enlisted
at once for three months, and, as his master was a patriotic
man, he received without any doubt his liberty. He then
enlisted for eight months, then for three years and at the
expiration of the time enlisted again for three years and
was honorably discharged at the close of the war. This
man, Peter Salem, as he was called, was at Bunker Hill
and Saratoga, as his tombstone in the cemetery testifies.
/'};;■ Tzvo Centuries.
15
111 the Trumbull Gallery at New Haven, hangs a
picture of the Battle of Bunker Hill by our great histori-
cal painter, John Trumbull. The thousands from all
parts of this wide land who look in admiration at the
noble work of the artist, will not fail to notice the colored
man in the foreground behind the retreating Americans
adjusting his firelock as for one more shot in defense of the
half finished redoubt.
One of the greatest orators of our country, and indeed
of our century, said on Bunker Hill, as he pointed to the
noble shaft : — "It is the monument of the day, of the
event, of the battle of Bunker Hill ; of all the brave men
who shared its perils, — alike Prescott and Putnam and
Warren, — the chiefs of the day and the colored man
Salem, who is reported to have shot the gallant Pitcairn
as he mounted the parapet."
Whatever our fathers may have done and whatever we
may do, it is well to bear in mind this one fact: that there
is a church of the living God on earth, the great church
of history. In this church where the immortals are
gathered no questions are asked about a man's social
position, wealth, color, orthodoxy, or heterodoxy. The
brave heart loyal to truth and liberty gives a man a place
in the ranks of the just, and humanity is satisfied, for no
one is ashamed to stand beside Peter Salem at Bunker Hill.
Important as the meeting house of our fathers was in a
religious point of view, as the meeting place with God,
it was also the meeting place with men, and was the
centre of their social and political life. They never
allowed any superstitions to grow up around it. They
had no such feelings towards it as the Catholic or the
Episcopalian cherish for their places of worship, nor even
the milder reverence that has grown up in the minds of
their children in this irreverent generation.
There was no sacred enclosure ; the ground in front of
it was usually the training field, the stocks were in close
1 6 The Story of a Church
proximity to the door, and the whipping post was not far
off. The ammunition and arms were stored in the loft
over the auditorium, and the minister was allowed to
store his corn there, but not in such quantities as to
endanger the building; in one case the poor man was
limited to two hundred and fifty bushels. In the audito-
rium the town meetings were held, and they were of
frequent occurence.
The church and the town were virtually one until the
charter of William and Mary, when a property qualifi-
cation took the place of a theological. But the two
continued to act together until the constitution in 1820
which completed the separation of church and state.
When the first minister of this church was settled, the
town acted in its corporate capacity in calling him, and
all the inhabitants were assessed to build the church, pay
his salary and the running expenses.
But the outward history of a church is of little conse-
quence compared with the history of the progress of its
thought. To understand this we must take a general
survey of the religious thought of New England during
these two hundred years, and then we shall be able to see
more clearly the work done here.
The discussions in the New England churches were not
at first of a theological character, but were confined chiefly
to matters pertaining to church polity or government.
This was natural, as they were departing widely from the
usages of the reformed churches. The first churches in
New England were bound together by a covenant and not
by a creed, and, while on friendly terms, were wholly
independent of each other. There was nothing in the
covenant of the First Church at Salem that an ordinary
Unitarian would object to. Indeed it is inscribed on the
walls of the church today and reads as follows : — " We
Covenant with the Lord and one with another; and do
bind ourselves in the presence of God, to walk together
For 7 wo Centuries. 17
in all his ways, according, as he is pleased to reveal him-
self unto us in his Blessed word of Truth."
These discussions finally culminated in the Synod of
Cambridge in 1648. The churches were all but two
represented and adopted with singular unanimity a plat-
form prepared by Richard Mather. It laid down the
doctrine that every candidate for church fellowship must
satisfy the church as to his knowledge of Christian
doctrines and the reasons therefor, and have experienced
what was called regeneration. The standard of the West-
minster Assembly of Divines was adopted and the
churches of New England became hot-beds of dogmatism
and intolerance.
After the settlement of the question of church polity
the people turned their attention to theology and became
the most Calvanistic people in the world, with perhaps the
exception of the Scots. The five points of Calvanism
covered the whole field of their thoughts.
It is a very striking illustration of the complete revolu-
tion that has taken place in religious thought in New
England that the themes which occupied the attention and
thought of the fathers have lost all interest for the
children. They have disappeared from the life of today
and hardly left a wreck behind them. There are probably
very few persons in this audience, if any, or in this town,
whether orthodox or heterodox, who could name "the
Five Points of Calvinism.'' We are not told by any
high authority in spiritual things that: "The times of
this ignorance God winked at but now commandeth all
men everywhere to repent." "But brethren I would not
have you ignorant ' ' of what the fathers thought vital to
salvation. The Five Points are as follows: —
I. Predestination, or particular election.
II. Irresistible Grace.
III. Original Sin, or Total Depravity.
IV. Peculiar Redemption.
V. The final perseverance of the Saints.
i8 The Story of a Church
It was a period of astonishing theological activity. In
illustration of these frightful themes whole bodies of
divinity were published, but they were first delivered as
sennons. Samuel Willard left a work entitled "A
complete Body of Divinity," which was published in a
huge tome of nine hundred and fourteen pages, each page
having two columns, in small and compact type. It was
all delivered in two hundred and fifty sermons in the
nineteen years, extending across the period of the organi-
zation and early years of this church.
But whatever we may think of the theology of John
Calvin, we must acknowledge that Calvinism has produced
a very remarkable race of men, and has left to us a royal
inheritance of political institutions and liberties. It was
not a bad mental stimulus and the child was early exer-
cised and trained in it. He was not sent to a girls' school,
but he was given the catechism of the Rev. John Cotton, —
" Milk for New England Babes Drawn from the Breasts
of both Testaments for their Spiritual Nourishment."
You may think that there was little milk in it, but you
may be assured of this one thing, — there was no water.
The child had a rugged training and acquired a mental
culture of inestimable value. He was taught to think
clearly and deeply. Thus Calvinism nursed, educated
and armed with invincible might an antagonist who by
and by would question not its reasoning but its premises.
But Calvinism as exhibited in Puritanism not only
exercised the reason, it strengthened the domestic affec-
tions, and through them brought into the field of church
polity another factor. In the Puritan church everything
culminated at the communion table, and no one could
approach it but a member of the church who was sound
in his belief and had had personal assurance of his own
regeneration, and only such had a right to bring their
children forward for baptism. But the younger generation,
although good men living blameless lives and who had
For Tzvo Centuries.
19
themselves been baptised in infancy, did not join the
church. The position of their children was pitiable
enough ; they were little pagans who had strolled into the
services of a Christian church, but were outside its guard-
ianship and beyond ' ' the ecclesiastical inspection ' ' that
goes with baptism.
The parents were anxious to have their children
baptised, and, on the ground that they were born into
the church and entitled to its care and nurture, the church
yielded and parental affection triumphed over orthodoxy.
This is known in our history as " the Half-way Covenant. ' '
It met with little opposition, as the grandparents who had
the matter in their hands wished to have their grand-
children baptised and see them under the protection of the
church .
The half-way-covenant theory is usually looked upon
as the mother of that brood of heresies known as Unitarian-
ism. However this may be, it introduced into the polity
of the church of that time a new principle, a principle
that announced that the church was made for man and not
man for the church. It was the beginning of a movement
which in time changed the church from a little private
party of "visible saints," who thought they had been
elected from the foundation of the world to be the especial
recipients of divine favor, and made it an organization
of men and women whose object it was to succor,
and cultivate all noble aspirations after the divine and
quicken and energize all kindly feelings towards the
human.
It was the beginning of a great advance in thought,
feeling and practice. Some of the bars were removed
and not even Jonathan Edwards could put them back, and
he lost his pulpit at Northampton for trying to do so.
Let me quote on this point the words of an accomplished
historian whose recent death we all have reason to lament.
20 The Story of a Church
The Rev. George Leon Walker, D.D., in a lecture deliv-
ered to the students of a theological school has said :
" It is no exageration to say that, though the Congregational
churches of New England have rejected the Half-way-Cov-
enant theory, they are today generally admiuing to iull
communion a membership which exhibits less clearly under-
stood and realized convictions of sin and of the necessity of
atoning grace as the only hope of lost men than under that
system were often expected of those who came only halfway
within the covenant doors." — ( Some Religious Aspects, 174.)
In the fourth decade of the eighteenth century it was
noticed that a marked decadence of religion and morals
had taken place and a thorough reform was called for.
The man was at hand to organize the crusade and
restore the old discipline and rigidity. The powerful
genius of Jonathan Edwards now came to the front. He
was unsurpassed as a dialectician, but his clear, calm, cold
and merciless logic was reinforced by an imagination that
the greatest poets might have envied, which gave to
everything he said an intense realism. He appealed at
once to the mind and heart, to the reason and to the
feelings. The dogmas of Galvanism in his hands ceased
to be mere theological abstractions that might lie dormant
in the soul until the day of judgment, but dreadful reali-
ties of imminent and supreme importance, and he
introduced and emphasized with great skill a new feature,
the personal responsibility of the sinner for his graceless
state. "The Great Awakening" was the result of his
preaching. Whitefield came from England with his
blazing oratory to swell the influence until the country
was in a whirl of religious excitement of the greatest
intensity. "The dry bones of the prevailing orthodoxy
rattled, and the people came to Christ in flocks," as
Edwards said.
The excesses of the movement were very great, and
some questioned the spirit, whether it was of God or no.
For Two Centuries. 2i
Among these was Charles Channcy, one of the leading
ministers of Boston. He opposed the whole movement,
publicly denounced Whitefield, and entered into a discus-
sion with Edwards himself. But the Lord's Supper was
more strictly guarded and the road to church membership
was made more difficult and thorny than before. The
result, however, was not encouraging. When the excite-
ment subsided and men began to think once more, a
reaction set in which produced astonishing results.
The reaction brought together scattered influences that
had been working for a long time in silence. The clergy
and the laity began to study in the spirit of real investi-
gation, and heretical views ceased to be feared. At the
close of the "Great Awakening," a Boston bookseller
bought out an edition of Emlyn's "Humble Inquiry,"
in which was stated very cogent reasons for not believing
the doctrine of the Trinity. The great teachers began to
give reasons for the opinions they taught, and did not
depend upon scriptural proof-texts. The War of the
Revolution had a tremendous influence upon the religious
thought of the people, for of religion it may be said, as
Hosea Bigelow said of its great coadjutor:
" civlyzation does git forrid
Sometimes upon a powder-cart."
The humanities began to come into the foreground and
scholastic dogmas sank into the background. When the
alarm was sounded it was too late ; the great majority of
the people in the leading churches had ceased to be
orthodox.
The legitimate result of these reactionary and advancing
forces was American Unitarianism. As a movement it
was open to the influences of all the ages, and has been so
far open to the influences of the age that was present as
time advanced. It allowed human nature its right to
speak on the high problems of the soul, of time and
22 The Story of a Church
eternity, and it affirmed with all its strength the veracity
of its intellectual, moral and spiritual convictions. It has
drifted, rather than been guided by any human hand,
through many stages of experiences and many phases of
thought, and has been vexed by many sharp controversies,
but its discussions have seldom descended to wrangling.
At last it has taken a position upon which all can stand.
The youngest church in Christendom, it has accepted
the oldest and the simplest statement of faith and practice
in the world. This statement is an affirmation of the aim
of all the various manifestations of religion on earth. It
is so broad that it takes in all the races of men and is
good for all time and eternity. Its disciples may be
denied the name of Christian, they may themselves think
they are or they may think they are not ; it is not a
matter worth disciissing. But it is well to remember that
you have the only bond of union and liberty in Christen-
dom that has the express and unequivocal sanction of
Jesus of Nazareth. He said of the two great command-
ments of the law which are inscribed on your banner :
"Do this and thou shalt live."
When we pass from the broad stream of the general
history of the Church to the history of individual churches,
we find ourselves very often, alas, in eddies, whirled about
by angry waters that chafe and foam and fret and are
dark with mud, and full of floating debris which has
drifted in from all directions. Men are never absurd on
purpose, but a church quarrel comes very near the line
that divides the reasonable from the great inane. I have
never heard one cited as an evidence of "total depravity."
Perhaps it would prove too much and weaken the cause.
It is not worth our while to rake the ashes of the past
for the dying embers of old church quarrels. They are
in their origin usually of a personal nature, and they try
to invest themselves with ecclesiastical dignity by putting
on a dress clumsily patched up oiit of so-called Christian
For Two Centuries. 23
doctrines. It is astonishing how pious and orthodox men
will grow when they are like to get worsted in a church
quarrel. They are then just in a condition to do an
incalculable amount of harm, that does not die when the
original actors are dead, buried and forgotten, but illus-
trates the truth of Mark Anthony's saying: — " The evil
that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with
their bones." But the kingdom of God suffereth violence
and violence taketh it by force. There is no better
evidence of the vitality of the church than that it can
stand a succession of these rackets. This churcli has
great vitality.
The original covenant of this chiirch, signed by
eighteen persons (men) on the 8th of October, 1701, is a
document of about two hundred words in one sentence.
( Forty years later Jonathan Edwards proposed a covenant
of one thousand five hundred and sixty-eight words. ) It
began in the conventional form of the time with a
confession: — "We do, under a soul-humbling and abasing
sense of our utter unworthiness of so great and high a
privilege as God is graciously putting into our hands,
accept of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for our
God in covenant with us," and so forth.
The humility expressed in the early covenants, so
foreign to our thought and feeling, was not of the Uriah
Heep type. The familiar couplet of the New England
Primer : —
"In Adam's fall
We sinned all,"
is very democratic in its spirit ; it puts kings and priests
on a level with the lowest, poorest and weakest, and
humility is the only becoming state of mind, for "all are
made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself,
and the pains of hell forever." Humility is the only
24 The Story of a Church
possible state of mind for him who believes this and sees
the everlasting glories on the one hand and the everlasting
fires on the other.
There was a time when men believed that they were
born children of wrath, but that God had opened a way of
escape and had given them assurance of it. We today,
both orthodox and heterodox, are prone to forget that the
infinite Originality is equal to any condition a human soul
may be in and can give it the peace of heavenly places if
it looks up to God.
This covenanting with God is at best a matter of
legality, and belonged to the thought of a people who
clung to the idea of commercial relations in spiritual
things. There is a vastly higher relationship folded up
in the familiar words taught us at our mother's knee,
"Our Father who art in Heaven." The simple question
for us to settle is whether we feel the latter as strongly as
our fathers did the fonner.
It was without doubt understood that the creed of the
Church was the Confession of Faith adopted at Boston in
i6So. But the Church was not up in all respects to the
requirements of organized Congregationalism. The office
of Elder does not seem to have been provided for. The
theory was that the will of Christ ought to govern in the
Church. But who was to interpret that will? In the
New England theocracy it was not revealed to the church
members but to the elders. When the elder ordered
business or administered admonition, every faithful soul
was expected to assent, and if he did not he was held as
"factious and obstinate." The elders have been rightly
called "a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent
Democracy." With this class of ecclesiastical tyrants
this church would have nothing to do. The church was
right, for the office of elder has no foundation in either
Scripture or reason, and was an invention of John Calvin.
But the rejection of this functionary caused a great deal
For Two Centuries. 35
of trouble and was one of the causes of two secessions
from the church. The spirit of dissension ran so high at
one time that the Lord's Supper was omitted, and at
another time that a day was set apart for humiliation and
prayer on account of dissensions.
It is a very significant fact that while the Great Awak-
ening was in progress and the churches in the neighbor-
hood were aroused, and Edwards himself preached in this
immediate vicinity, he was not asked, so far as I can find,
to occupy this pulpit ; Whitefield preached in town once
but not by invitation of this church. The people seem
to have objected to the methods pursued, and the name
of their minister is not among those who signed the great
declaration of approval.
But quite as significant of the tone and temper of the
people is their action at the ordination of their second
minister, the Rev. Matthew Bridge. A committee was
selected " to be the mouthpiece of the church at the coun-
cil." They proposed to the candidate two questions; one
of a general nature as to church government, and the second
was, "if in important matters he was willing to take the
vote of the church with uplifted hands." His answer
was satisfactory to the great majority. But a protest was
sent to the council against the ordination of the candidate
on the ground that * * the scope and tenor of his preaching
was unsatisfactory, that many such doctrines, as we
esteem of greatest importance, are wholly omitted or at
best slightly touched upon in his sermons, particularly the
doctrine of original sin, the imputation of it ; the total
loss of the image of God in the fall of Adam ; the wrath
and curse of God consequent thereon," and six other
doctrines that have the genuine ring of the faith once
delivered to the saints by John Calvin.
Mr. Bridge was, however, ordained, as he said, "on the
old foundation." The dissenting brethren seceded and
formed a new church which had a short history, and the
26 The Story of a Church
newly ordained minister was left to pursue his work in
peace for years to come. After his death the church was
without a settled minister for some years, but at the close
of the Revolutionary War the people called the Rev.
David Kellogg. He was a conservative man who held
orthodox views, loved peace, and did what he could for
union. He reinstated the reading of the Scriptures as a
part of the church services, which was looked upon as
"unedifying" in the churches of New England, and the
town granted eight dollars to purchase a Bible for the
pulpit. He was also instrumental in inducing the people
to use Watts's Hymns and Psalms.
This church as an organization, like many others at
that time, was steadily declining in numbers and power,
owing to a very gradual and silent change that was taking
place in the minds of men. During Mr. Bridge's admin-
istration, extending over twenty-nine years, from 1746
to 1775, eighty-one men had joined the church on
confession of faith. During the administration of Dr.
Kellogg, extending over forty-eight years, from 1781 to
1829, there were only sixty-nine.
A crisis was approaching and its coming was accelerated
by a meeting held on the 24th of April, 1826, at which a
parish was duly organized according to law. From this
time all connection between the town and the parish
ceased, and the church became independent of civil
authorities. This movement opened the way for the
parish to take a hand in the management of affairs and
have a voice in the proceedings, and the need of an assist-
ant to the now aged Dr. Kellogg afforded an occasion.
It was, however, soon apparent that the church and the
parish were not likely to agree in the selection. They
sought to bridge over the difficulty by employing preachers
of the old and the new school to occupy the pulpit alter-
nately. But the experiment was a failure, and nothing
remained but a trial of strength, and the parish was
For Two CentJiHcs. 27
victorious. The minority seceded. This was the third
secession from the church in its history. The first two
were failures, but the third was a success. It took the
name of the " HoUis Evangelical Society" — a name
sacred to Unitarians, and we have to thank them for edu-
cating the Rev. Minot J. Savage for our ranks.
The people of the First Parish immediately erased the
names of the second and third persons of the Trinity from
their covenant and called a minister. Their intelligence
and their theological position is clearly indicated by the
character of the men they invited to take part in the ordi-
nation of their new minister. They named for the sennon
Dr. Channing or the Rev. James Walker, for the ordaining
prayer Dr. Lowell, and for the concluding prayer the
Rev. Raph Waldo Emerson.
Now that the noise of the controversy has died away it
is pleasant to note the undertones of kindly feeling that
have come down to us. The First Parish put on record
an expression of their sorrow that so many of their fellow-
worshipers and their old minister had left them. Dr.
Kellogg was invited to sit with the council at the ordina-
tion of his successor, but declined on account of the
infirmities of old age. He was invited to occupy his old
pulpit afterwards and did. At his funeral the minister of
this church, the Rev. William Barry, the conscientious
and graceful historian of the town, took part in the
services. It had been decided by the Supreme Court of
the Commonwealth that a church separating for any cause
from a parish loses its existence in the eye of the law, and,
therfore, that the seceding body could have no right to
either the name, furniture, records or property of the
church. The First Parish appointed a committee to confer
with a committee of the new church and instructed them
to make this proposal : — That the records go to the First
Parish and the communion service to the new church ; it
was accepted. The time is coming when the proud and
28 The Story of a Church
opinionated with their egotism will vanish and only the
bright side of these old stories will find a place in our
remembrance.
It would be pleasant, did time permit, to look in upon the
charities of the church, — and there are plenty of illustra-
tions of the great human heart that was in it, — and to
speak of private generosity that with wise foresight has
blessed the present and the future. It would be pleasant
to speak of those men of culture and deep moral convic-
tions who have stood in this place and spoken for God and
duty, and to remind you of those brave men whose hearts
"on war's red touchstone rung true metal," — and among
them stand two of your own ministers, Matthew Bridge
and Charles A. Humphreys, who ventured their lives, one
to throw off the yoke of an English king, the other to
redeem the land from the more odious tyranny of a slave-
holding oligarchy; it would be pleasant to speak of those
men of affairs who have taken no unimportant part in the
great business of the world, and of those who have been
interested in the world of letters, one of whom has become
the conscientious and painstaking historian of an unpop-
ular cause, — the Loyalists of the Revolution.
It is a pleasant duty to pause in the rush of affairs and
commemorate the heroic virtues of the men and women
who toiled in the past and made the summits of the present
accessible to their children ; summits where the air is
invigorating and bracing, and the outlook is wide, and
where the native spiritual instincts of the soul, those
"High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised ;
Which be they what they may, are yet the fountain
Light of all our day ; the master light of all our seeing,"
can act with greater freedom and power.
It is indeed a blessed privilege, as well as a duty, to give
thanks for the organization through which the fathers
For Two Centuries.
29
wrought with such beneficent results for us and those who
come after us. We celebrate today the formation of that
Organization two hundred years ago. What are its rela-
tions to us now? Is it like "a Pine-tree Shillino- "
valuable chiefly on account of its age, or is it about to
enter upon a larger field of action and exert a greater
influence than ever before with the coming in of another
century?
It has helped the fathers to deliver themselves and their
children forever from the thrall of cruel creeds, and from
those grim idols "graven by art and Man's device," called
theological dogmas, some of which had a striking resem-
blance to Moloch, "horrid king," who " made his grove
The pleasant valley of Hinnon, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell."
Their efforts have left us an atmosphere unpointed by
brimstone-fumes, and a sky without a trace of apocalyp-
tical phantasmagoria. It was, indeed, a great work, but
a greater remains to be done, and it is a work in sweet
accord with the spirit of a Christian church ; a work not
of destruction or of theological controversy, but of discus-
sion and education, peace and union.
Human nature as we have come to see it, is not a
devilish anarchy, but a hierarchy of powers, rising one
above another until the highest brings the human into
communion with the divine. Each has rights in its own
sphere, but the lower has no rights except to serve when
the higher makes its demands.
It is the high function of the Church today to remind
us of the great possibilities of our nature , to encourage
us to trust our spiritual intuitions as we trust the revela-
tions of our sense ; to show us that ' ' the perennial foun-
tains of religion lie in the primal essence of the reason and
the moral conscienciousness," and that there we find " a
30 The Story of a Church
Spirit that beareth witness with our spirit that we are chil-
dren of God ; " to so cultivate the devout trusts and habits of
the soul as to enable us to read aright the moral significance
of the past and separate with unerring instinct the truth of
God from the egotism of man ; to so nourish the spirit of
humility that we may ever be seekers and learners ; to so
inspire our minds with the spirit of reverence that we may
walk with uncovered heads, not only in the presence of the
sublime manifestations of nature, but in the presence of
sobbing grief and kneeling penitence; to so emphasize the
power of the conscience as to make us sure ' ' our sins will
find us out ; " to so encourage us to believe in the good and
its final triumph over evil that the night will shine as the
day, while we work or wait for the dawn ; and to impress
upon us the all-consoling fact that, whatever may happen,
the infinite Love and Care is so great that even ' * the hairs
of the head are all numbered."
On these grounds and for these causes the Church makes
today its appeal to you all, both young and old. It is the
noblest appeal that was ever made to man, for it makes
possible a glorious state of society based on a reasonable
and consecrated obedience of the tw^o great commandments
of the law, — love to God, and love to man.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
014 069 778 3